Sanford Smith's WORKS ON PAPER

At the Park Avenue Armory

By Glenn Loney

The various Benefits & Dealers' Shows at the Park Avenue Armory open
& close in a weekend. Once they are over, most of them are not even History,
unlike the Great Blockbuster Museum Shows.

Nonetheless, there are often some impressive artworks or antiques on offer
at these sales. The recent Sanford L. Smith Works on Paper was one of the
best of these in recent years.

The Art of Arthur Syzk: Illuminations or Cartoons?

One Astonishing Find for your correspondent at the Armory was an effectual
celebration of the amazing artwork of Arthur Szyk. During World War II, I'd
often admired his magazine-covers and Patriotic Posters.

What made these so very special was the infinite detail Szyk lavished on
his Cartoonish Casts of Characters. Although his images of Fascist Monsters
like Goering, Goebels, Mussolini, & Hitler lampooned them hilariously,
the colorful details had the qualities of Medieval Illuminations!

A pious & learned Jew, desperately trying to arouse American awareness
of the Nazi Genocide of the Jews in Europe, Szyk used his brilliant talents
and fertile imagination to focus attention on this evil in major American
publications. He was also an earnest advocate for the State of Israel.

But his pen & brushes even more often served the Cause of American Freedom
and the Brotherhood of Man. Unfortunately, his death at only 57 was hastened
by the stress of a completely unjustified Investigation by the House Committee
on Un-American Activities!

Irvin Ungar is the man to see--or phone--about Szyk's Life and Artworks. At
his Historicana booth, I bought a copy of his impressive Justice Illuminated:
The Art of Arthur Szyk. And he gave me the colorful five-fold brochure of
Szyk's Anti-Nazi Mural at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington,
DC.

If you want to know more about Arthur Syzk--including the prices his remarkable
drawings & paintings are now commanding--you can contact Ungar at Historicana
in Burlingame, CA, and even join the Arthur Szyk Society! [Burlingame is between
San Francisco & Palo Alto, if you are going out to The Coast anytime soon!
Phone: 650-343-9588/email: info@szyk.org]

Postcard Artists by Jacques Moitoret

At Francis M. Naumann's booth, my eye was caught by some colorful postcards--fully
suitable for mailing. But I wouldn't dream of putting stamps on these! Instead,
I've already put them in my favorite photo-album

And what's the reason for this unseasonable hoarding? On each card is a compelling
portrait of a famous Modern Artist, with a Seminal Artwork behind him.

Here's Piet Mondrian; there's Pablo Picasso. Andy is in front of two silk-screened
Jackie Kennedys. Dali's in front of a limp watch dripping from a dead tree.

You can mail these to impress your friends. Or you can keep them for parties,
to embarrass enemies with on-the-spot Art-History Quizzes. I thought one image
was Rauschenberg, but, no, it was Jasper Johns!

If you cannot afford Jacques Moitoret's original oil-paintings reproduced
on the cards, you can surely afford a packet of the actual cards! Send them
or keep them, but call Naumann for more info: 212-472-6800.

Other Booths: Other Brochures & Catalogues

It's good to have Twentieth Century Masters, from Simon Capstick-Dale Fine
Art.

And Miklos Suba, from James Graham & Sons, for Suba is an almost unknown
New York City artist who made some charming drawings and watercolors of city-architecture.
Indeed, his pencil-studies for a ''Fire-Escape'' and for ''Under the El Tracks''
show wonderful draftsmanship that almost suggests those Escher puzzles, so
unusual are the perspectives.

Other captivating brochures and catalogues were garnered from Galerie Sabine
Vazieux/Paris, Battledore/Kingston/NY, Worthington Gallery/Chicago, Susan
Teller Gallery/NY, Hill-Stone/NY, & Jörg Maaß/Berlin, with a very handsome
small booklet for Die Brücke…